The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Catch-All

Maybe show your wife this blog post from Brainy Gamer

Skyrim for Small Fry

Obviously your son is much older than five, but vanilla Skyrim is fairly tame as things go. Heads flying off and the slow motion combat animations would be the most concerning if I were going to be concerned about something. (I personally find them to be extraordinarily annoying and wish for the option to turn them off in my unmodded games.)

I can't recall any rape scenes at all. There might have been a mention of rape when talking to a Black-Briar in the Riften jail who is pretty scummy all around and I vaguely recall him boasting about bad behavior concerning women.

I seem to remember what struck me as a few sexual assault type references in dialog and in the history books, but they were more in the style of a baudy joke in a Disney film. Phrased in an innocuous way that would pass by completely if you weren't already primed to look for it.

Hehe, yeah... I was going to bring up “The Lusty Argonian Maid” - those are great. There’s the Dibella worshiper in The Bard and Bee(?) (the thieves guild town bar), but they’re consenting (and possibly paying) adults. There is a torture dungeon in the Assassin’s Guild, iirc... maybe (also?) in the Vampire castle?

Some light cannibalism.

I forgot her name, but there's a Thieves Guild member who doesn't like to talk about her past. Eventually though, she reveals that she was raped by a gang of bandits, then got her revenge on them. It's not something she mentions to just anybody on the street, you have to dig deep into conversation with her, if memory serves.

https://www.commonsensemedia.org/gam...

Common Sense Media is probably one of the best places to get reviews for kids. I usually pay more attention to the parent's and kid's reviews.

Also IMDB has a Parents Guide Section
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1814884...

The vanilla Skyrim doesn't have any sex acts or rape scenes that I recall. There is some talk as mentioned above but nothing explicit. I'd let my daughter play it now at 10 if she was interested but she is a very mature 10 year old. 12 or 13 would probably be an average age.

I’m trying to level up my enchantment so I can make it so it costs zero magic to cast destruction spells. I don’t think I even need it for game-play reasons but more of the challenge to build my character up to ge pint where they can do that.

(Best way to trap a bunch of souls in gems, btw?)

What is your best accomplishment in Skyrim?

jrralls wrote:

What is your best accomplishment in Skyrim?

I'm stealth-archering around in VR, and with the immediacy of the bow, my favorite thing to do is sneak up to overlook points, then start making trick shots - see if I can hit a guy behind a rock by shooting high and relying on arrow-drop.

jrralls wrote:

What is your best accomplishment in Skyrim?

Doing a full mod using STEP and playing the game for more than 20 minutes.

jrralls wrote:

I’m trying to level up my enchantment so I can make it so it costs zero magic to cast destruction spells. I don’t think I even need it for game-play reasons but more of the challenge to build my character up to ge pint where they can do that.

(Best way to trap a bunch of souls in gems, btw?)

What is your best accomplishment in Skyrim?

eh.. souls.. honestly.. just buy them everywhere you can. trapping .. I dunno where to find lots of low level mobs, if you're just looking to level up. maybe bandit camps/mines?

Does casting for zero mana require leveling up? Can't you just get gear that reduces the cost of your destruction spells 25% per piece and wear 4 pieces?

My understanding is that I have to have 100 level enchantment in order to get the ability to enchant four pieces of gear for 25% Reduction per piece.

I tried TESO during the free trial and it didn't land with me. But it did get me wanting to play Skyrim again and I started over from scratch.

jrralls wrote:

My understanding is that I have to have 100 level enchantment in order to get the ability to enchant four pieces of gear for 25% Reduction per piece.

I was probably reading that without understanding what I was reading. Right you are!

jrralls wrote:

(Best way to trap a bunch of souls in gems, btw?)

Enchant a weapon with 1s of Soul Trap (or better yet, Fiery Soul Trap)) . Kill stuff with it when you have empty soul gems in your inventory.

Doing the Azura's Star quest (I always go for the Black Star personally) will give you a reusable soul gem, which is handy.

Don’t forget to use the alchemy-enchanting feedback loop. Enchant items with improved alchemy, use them to make better potions of improved enchanting.

I ended up going back to manual casts of Soul Trap after I ended up seeing higher level gems "wasted" when I ran out of lower gems. May be something you can work around simply by buying all common and lower soul gems you ever see in a shop.

Something that's not explained by the game is that if you screw up and trap a lower-level soul in a higher-level gem, if you drop the gem on the ground and pick it back up again, it will be emptied.

I'm sure i remember seeing a mod that stopped the higher gems being filled by lower souls, unless there was no other gem available... Could be wrong though, it's been a while...

I thought the unofficial patch fixes soul gems but if not there are a number of mods that do. One was called named soul gems. The soul would be put in the correct sized gem and be named after the character that was soul trapped if they had a unique name. Fun if you like collecting souls of important NPCs.

I used that mod, and it made the whole thing much less fiddly. I think it was called acquisitive soul gems (or something similar).

It’s been a few years since I played Skyrim. What is the use of soul gems?

Used to enchant things, and also to recharge the enchantment on weapons.

You use then to charge enchantments.

Baron Of Hell wrote:

I thought the unofficial patch fixes soul gems but if not there are a number of mods that do. One was called named soul gems. The soul would be put in the correct sized gem and be named after the character that was soul trapped if they had a unique name. Fun if you like collecting souls of important NPCs.

Well, we now know what you do in-game. Living up to your name, eh?

I'm starting to get that old Skyrim itch again...

Steam says I last played July 2018 so yeah, sounds like I'm just about due to spend a month working on my load order and downloading mods then play for a few months and promptly forget about whoever I'm playing as leaving them in their limbo state until 12 months later when I get the itch, realise I have no idea what is going on in their save and it's not compatible with the mods I've downloaded and consign their world to the oblivion of my recycling bin never to return.

Prozac, I have just started the same thing. There is a new Enaisian mod out that is very good - Wintersun
and
kryptopyr has released most of her mods (Complete Alchemy and Cooking Overhaul
Alchemy) for SSE now

Doesn't disenchanting items also level enchanting?

Prozac wrote:

I'm starting to get that old Skyrim itch again...

This game more than any other does that to me.

I get random Skyrim urges every 12-18 months, and I do the same thing. Spend a few days reinstalling, updating, selecting mods, then playing for a month, then abandoning the character. Well, I finished the game once, so it's not necessarily hopeless.

EverythingsTentative wrote:

Doesn't disenchanting items also level enchanting?

I don't think so, I think it only gives you the recipe for that enchantment.

One day I am going to learn to mod properly so I can truly enjoy not playing the game the way you folks do. I've never successfully installed SSE so I have no idea how to use more advanced mods.

This has the distinct downside of making it all too easy for me to actually play the game, so much so that I've .. wait.. still only completed the main quest line twice. Hmm..